The Beginning of the Great Purge

 I’ve been trying to become more intentional with what I do, what I say, and what I own because clutter is creating both exterior and interior noise that is affecting me on so many different levels and especially my spiritual life.

That’s not to say I’m anywhere near where I should be. That little “this is an A & B conversation so C your way out of it” comment i wrote on Twitter recently was far from being my best moment, no matter what that person’s intention was.

It started with deleting more than 90% of the photos on my phone. They weren’t all recent; some are from almost 20 years ago. I had close to 11k photos. You read that right. I’m currently down to about 1,050 and still have more to delete. Granted, most of those photos were actually screencaps of IG posts and other information I had every intention of placing into my notes and deleting… but I never got around to doing it until these last 2-3 weeks. After all that information purge, I plan on printing the photos I want to keep (some that I won’t be sharing publicly and some I’ve already shared and want to keep a memory of) and keeping them in a photo album. My optic nerve atrophy may be permanent and I may never be able to see them properly again but that doesn’t mean I can’t have three around to share with others. 

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. I have books, music, paperwork (especially coursework from when I was studying to become a speech-language and pathologist), clothing that no longer fits or is old, all the digital clutter on my phone and social media feeds, etc to get through. It’s just one massive purge that will take me a long time to get through. 

I’ve not exactly embraced a minimalist mindset, at least not in the trendy secular sense. I’m not doing it for aesthetic purposes. I’m not doing it because it’s the “cool” thing to do. I’m not doing it because I want to rebel against our increasingly materialistic society. I’m doing it because, as I said, it affects me.

I get distracted very easily unless I’m absolutely immersed in something I’m interested in. Sometimes alarms will go off or my mom will say something but because I’m laser-focused on something, I won’t hear anything. Other times I’m like Dug in Up! (“Squirrel!”) and I miss a lot of important things. I’ve especially noticed this during Mass. 

At the moment, because of my health, I’ve been watching Mass through streaming via EWTN. Except for Holy Saturday (before I found out EWTN has their daily Mass available for streaming On-Demand) and my birthday (because I had unexpected visitors and my day was filled with unexpected things), I’ve not missed a single daily Mass in months. But just because I don’t miss a Mass doesn’t mean I’m present. It’s been an uphill battle to stay focused. I think I’m going to have to wear an eye mask during the Mass so other things won’t catch my eye or wear my chapel veil and keep the TV or tablet screen directly in front of me so I can focus on it. Yes, I’m visually impaired and everything is blurry but I can still see colors and shapes so things will more easily catch my eye than it I could see clearly. Don’t ask me how it’s possible but that’s my new reality. 

My phone has become a huge distraction for me as well. I didn’t realize how I attached i was to it until a friend’s daughter pointed out that I took my phone everywhere with me, even when I had no need of it. This is a whole ‘mother story (in a nutshell: it became my security blanket when I was completely in the dark and my health was worse; it was my way of feeling safe as I could use to to contact anyone in an instant) and I’m making baby steps to detach myself from it but to make that even easier for me, I’ve had to eliminate distractions. I had already disabled all social media and app notifications. My phone is almost always on “do not disturb” mode. But even with all those things — and using the Freedom app to completely block all apps and websites during specific hours — it wasn’t enough. I can’t not use my phone as it’s my biggest ally as a visually impaired person (God bless the inventor(s) of the accessibility features) and I can’t use a “dumb phone” but I can do other things. 

This is why I started purging photos, why I’m offloading apps I rarely use but occasionally need, why I’ve deleted most “entertainment” apps (I’ll include a screen cap of the apps I’ve kept), and why I also decided to take a month-long break from Instagram. After all, IG was where I was getting all my information (remember the 10k+ screen caps I’ve already deleted?) and what I’d become disorderly attached to. Twitter is too overwhelming for me but IG I can handle… and that was a problem. So, I deleted the app completely instead of just offloading it. I do have an excuse to log in — to make sure I’m following accounts that will only add and not subtract truth, goodness, and beauty into my life — but I’m not going to use that excuse to log in. It can wait. It must wait. 

I’ve not completely eliminated all forms of entertainment but I’m trying to be more careful with what I consume. I download the podcast episode I want to listen to. I use my battery-operated pocket radio to listen to Classical KUSC (now renamed Classical California). I download the books and audiobooks onto the Kindle, Audible, and Overdrive apps. We’ve hooked up the TV in the living room (where I spend almost all my day) with a Roku so I can watch/listen to EWTN programs and the daily Mass. I have Disney+ for a month (a birthday gift) so the app has been activated. This is done to not have to rely on my phone or tablet for these types of entertainment; thus eliminating the urge to use the browser or other apps for other things. I turn off the wifi at least twice a day (granted, this is to limit EMF exposure) which will limit what I do on my phone and tablet as I need wifi for anything new on the tablet and I don’t get a lot of data per month on my basic phone plan. All done intentionally.

There’s more but this post is getting very long so I’ll post a part two soon. The part two will have more concrete examples of what I’ve had to get rid of and why and will be more focused on the spiritual aspect of the purge. This was more of a “practical facts” based post. For now I’ll say that this great purge is 100% necessary and I’ve already started seeing the early fruits of it. I’ll “blame” (thank) St. Francis of Assisi and Bl. Carlo Acutis if all of this helps me detach myself from things I’ve not successfully gotten rid of yet. 

Anyway, it’s going to be another hot late Spring day (I refuse to call it summer but it technically is) so I’m going to post this and then shut off the WiFi  until I watch the Mass. On the practical side, it’ll help us save the extra electricity cost from the wifi since we’ll have to have our central AC on all day. And on a more spiritual level, it’ll force me to embrace more silence for this Ember Wednesday. 

I hope you’re all doing well. ☺️

As always, thanks for reading and God bless!